PML-N Economic Agenda Tracking Report: June-December 2013

Dr. Khalil Ahmad & Ali Salman, January 2014

This report is the result of a project, “PML-N Economic Agenda: Tracking Report” which aims at initiating and informing policy dialogue and public debate on the implementation of the economic agenda of PML-N central government that sworn into the power at federal level in Pakistan in May 2013. The project is being supported by Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE).

Introduction

PML-N Economic Agenda: Tracking Report reviews Pakistan’s economic performance by tracking the progress made on the implementation of economic manifesto announced by the party in power in Islamabad, Pakistan

Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). The purpose is to initiate and inform policy dialogue and public debate on the progress made on the economic agenda of PML-N. This tracking directly serves the basic principle of a functioning democracy: accountability. Current report covers progress made during July-December 2014.

Structure

The report picks three distinct sections of the PML-N manifesto: Economic Revival, Energy Security and Social Protection, which it terms as “economic agenda”. These three “Areas” are then divided into “Components” and “Sub-components”. In most cases, these are based on a simple reproduction of text of the manifesto, and in some cases, some editing has been carried out for the purpose of clarification and structure, but without altering the meaning of the authors of the manifesto. Under the area of Economic Revival, 10 components and 57 sub-components (or targets) have been identified. Under the area of Energy Security, 15 components and 22 sub-components have been identified whereas under the area of Social Protection, three sub-components have been identified.

In all, the report identifies 82 measurable “indicators” and allocates scores on all of them, subject to information availability, on the basis of three distinct parameters: policy and legislative developments, institutional reforms, and implementation. Policy and Legislative Development indicate the presence, or absence, of a supportive legal environment; Institutional Reforms indicate the quality of governance structure and Implementation shows the actual progress made on the policy.

Scoring

The scorecard quantifies the status of implementation on announced goals in the PML-N economic agenda.

For each of the target area, the score is assigned from 0 to 10 with 10 being the highest. The score is sub-divided in three categories namely Legislative and Policy Developments (2.5), Institutional Reforms (2.5), and Implementation (5).